An injured student is carried from the rubble [EPA]

The three-storey La Promesse (The Promise) school in Petionville, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, caved in at about 10am (1500 GMT) on Friday, trapping possibly hundreds of people inside.

Students lay crushed under blocks of concrete, while crying and screaming parents tried to find their children among the debris.

As Rene Preval, the Haitian president, toured the scene of the school collapse, Yves Torchon, a rescue worker, said: "Mr President, they just discovered a room where there are at least 17 people dead."

The latest discovery came hours after an official said that 58 people had been killed in the incident.

Rescue efforts

Rescue workers, assisted by the International Red Cross, the Haitian Red Cross, and members of the UN Haiti peacekeeping force, used tools and their bare hands to dig through to children buried in the debris of the school in the hills above the capital.

"My son who is 15-years old, he's dead. He's my only son," said 40-year-old Josiane Dandin. "I don't know what I'm going to do."

One boy whose legs were trapped by debris begged rescuers to cut his feet off, a firefighter said.

Rene Preval, Haiti's president, and Michele Pierre-Louis, the prime minister, rushed to the scene to oversee rescue efforts.

The aid group Doctors Without Borders said it had taken 85 injured adults and children from the school, half of them with life-threatening injuries.

France expressed its "deep emotion" for the victims and promised aid.

"At the request of the Haitian authorities, France is preparing to send as soon as possible a civil security team to help the Haitian authorities in rescuing the victims who are still buried," Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, said in a statement.

Impoverished nation

A new storey had been under construction atop the three-floor school when it fell in, also destroying or damaging five homes next to it.

"This construction did not meet normal standards," Senator Yvon Bissereth told the AFP news agency

"We are going to ask the minister of education to make an inspection of all the schools built in the same way," he said.

About 500 students from primary through to high school ages attend the school in Petionville, but officials said they were unsure how many were inside at the time of the collapse.

The impoverished Caribbean nation, which lacks sophisticated rescue equipment, is continuing to struggle with the destruction wrought by four tropical storms and hurricanes that hit in quick succession this year, killing more than 800 people and destroying 60 per cent of the crop harvest.

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